The Once And Future King Character Analysis

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Ants, ferocious warriors, brave soldiers going off to battle to protect the Queen and banding together as one unit. This admired trait appears in popular culture, from kids movies such as A Bug’s Life to, more recently, Marvel’s Ant Man. However, T.H. White’s The Once and Future King illustrates an entirely different view of the ant culture. In this, these tiny soldiers are enslaved under their commander the Queen and lose their ability to produce an original thought. While Wart learns an important lesson among the ants,White gives us clues on the lesson and his general feelings towards war. He does this with character development and syntax, and illustrating the importance of words and how they affect war, both in our world and in Wart’s . …show more content…

In other lessons, Wart says he “likes fighting” and thinks “it is knightly” (170). However, in this lesson, Wart experiences what war is like, in person. From the moment he becomes an ant, Wart has had voices in his head, making statements such as “‘June-noon-moon-spoon’” (122). This constant stream of babble is neverending, and Wart is unable to produce an original thought. As he spends more time among the ants, a war breaks out, and “mammy-mammy- mammy gave place to Antland, Antland Over All” (128). This constant stream of nonsense and war propaganda negatively affects Wart “ The [Stream of Voices] had begun to kill the joy of life which belonged to his boyhood” (130). This destroying of innocence and boyhood by war reveals that White is against war and the sending off of young men to fight in a battle without really understanding …show more content…

Using syntax, the ants manipulate their words to support their war effort. This decision by White to give the ants this ability shows that he understands the power of words when it comes to war. The ants understand this too, and above their tunnel, a sign states that “EVERYTHING NOT FORBIDDEN IS COMPULSORY” (122). This language may seem uncomfortable and foreign to us, but it has a powerful message on the way the ants live. White emphasises “COMPULSORY” (122), and this message clues us in that the ant’s society is a communistic one, one that T.H. White is clearly against as depicted by Wart’s feelings of “dislike, even if he didn’t understand the meaning” (122). But while words such as these present White’s message, the lack of words also expresses his opinion. While among the ants, Wart discovers that he cannot express his thoughts,’in fact, all that he can express is “Done or Not Done” (124). “There were no words for happiness, for freedom, for liking, nor were their any words for their opposites” (124) in this society, leaving Wart the inability to speak out against what he thought was clearly wrong. This relates to the real world, where privates cannot speak out against their commanders without being punished, and some do not even realize what they are doing wrong. By limiting ants to just these words, the Queen has absolute power,

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